Joe Knows Resistor Kits

I was strolling through the digital aisles of Amazon.com the other day and one of the recommendations it popped up for me was a $20 resistor kit from a vendor I never heard of before called Joe Knows Electronics. The recommendation led me to a 1/4W 1% 860 piece resistor kit that seemed pretty well packaged, priced right and was fulfilled by Amazon.com (free shipping for orders of $25), so on a whim I thew it into my cart.

Fast forward a couple of days and I now have the kit in hand. The kit contains 10 each of 86 values from 0 – 10M ohm, each within it’s own separate zip-lock bag. Also the bags are ordered in the box from lowest to highest value, so it’s super easy to find the value you are looking for. The box is made out of heavyweight cardboard that should last, but you could easily transfer the bags to a plastic box, bin etc…

I did a random selection and tested a few resistors to see if they fell within their 1% advertised tolerance and here are the results:

Rated Ohms

Measured

Difference

10K

10.01K

0.10%

4.7K

4.66K

0.85%

1K

0.998K

0.20%

220

218.7

0.59%

All of the resistors I tested did fall within the 1% tolerance, although my bulk 5% 220 ohm resistors actually performed a little better than these did, but I guess you can’t count on that.

I do buy specific resistor values I use often in multiples of 100 from different suppliers, but for the random oddball values I rely on the old standby $10 assortment from RadioShack. For the extra $10 the Joe Knows Electronics Resistor kit is well worth it for the wider assortment, tighter tolerance and no work to identify and organize a batch. In the end it does look like at least Joe Knows Resistor Kits.

PS. I did go to www.joeknowselectronics.com and it looks like the only sell the resistor kit and a few LEDs, but do offer some type of manufacturing/prototyping services. Odd, but I do like the resistor kit.